


sanctuary

by mahariels



Series: all your bridges are burning [3]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, F/M, Jewish Character, Pre-Relationship, maccready hates sanctuary: a life story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-16
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-07 00:55:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 13,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5437451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mahariels/pseuds/mahariels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He can see her tensing, the tendon in her neck standing out in perfect relief, teeth grinding and her strong jaw set. "I can't. You're going to have to trust me on this one."</p><p>"In case you didn't notice, Boss, trust ain't exactly in surplus supply out in the Commonwealth."<br/></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> maccready hates sanctuary and rosa earns her scars.
> 
> set prior to kaddish, but after beginning of a beautiful friendship.

“All right,” the Boss says, “follow my lead.”

“’Swhat you’re paying me for, yeah?” he shoots right back at her.

She fixes him with one of the long, inscrutable looks he is beginning to most associate with her. “MacCready.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he says with a casual shrug. Truth is, he doesn’t much like the look of Sanctuary Hills from a distance. It’s fenced in around the bridge area but even he can see it’s too fucking open in the back. Anyone could come right down those fucking hills in the rear and burn the whole thing to the ground. A closed loop of little one-story houses, half-ruined, winds around the street; a large, blocky, three-story building thrown together from wood and metal scraps looming out of place in the center of it. The bridge bristles with machine gun turrets but from what he can see of the actual settlers, they’re a soft bunch.

They’ve been on the road pretty much constantly since she picked him up in Goodneighbor, finishing up what she called her “loose ends” before making the trek back to the main base (he noticed, even then, that she hadn’t called it  _home_ ). The loose ends included routing out a nest of ferals, picking up some mechanical thingamajig from an old subway station and dragging it back down to Cambridge, and quietly assassinating the head of an excavation with raider ties. In the meantime he’s gotten to know her a little. She doesn’t have much of a sense of humor (or if she does she keeps it very fucking close to the chest), she’s apt to solve things with a bullet rather than her words (he likes this very much), and whatever she’s got is as good as his, which is even better. She’ll occasionally advance him a few caps as hazard pay for particularly hairy situations.

She’s straight about everything, which he fucking appreciates more than he can begin to tell her. For a guy who shoots people for a living, it’s pretty stupid to care about things like that, but he likes knowing that the people he kills deserve it and that in any event, his boss has his back.

That's not to say she isn't a little odd—he still hasn't entirely figured out why she takes the time, most mornings, afternoons, and evenings to either sit quietly by herself (always facing east, he noticed), mumbling something, or completely vanishes and leaves him to handle their business. The first time she did it, he thought,  _fucking wonderful, she really is crazy_ , but then he'd decided that everyone was a little crazy, and at least she had the rest of her shit together, so if she wanted to talk to herself all of the goddamn time, who was he to judge?

After the Gunners she’s a breath of fresh goddamn air.

But Sanctuary’s another story all together. There’s no fucking way to explain it but it sets his teeth on edge and the gears in his head whirring. Any other place, a group of soft, sad looking settlers like that’d be a target for trouble. Any group of raiders or Gunners in the area would sweep through and smash them to bits, kill anyone who fought back and probably most of the people who didn’t. Take all the rich shit just building up like a twinkling, mocking beacon. It’s just so  _open_. He can even hear the grind of generators and see what looks like a cobbled-together water purifier emerging from the river. Fuck, that alone’s asking for trouble.

Where are the goddamn  _fortifications_? What on earth is the Boss thinking?

“Preston,” she calls to the man on the guard tower, “it’s me.” Unnecessarily, because the ugly-ass orange jumpsuit and gray knit cap she’s always wearing are pretty goddamn hard to miss.

“General! It’s been a while. Welcome home.” Preston turns out to be a tired-looking man who’s got to be at least ten years older than MacCready, wearing a ridiculous fucking cowboy hat and carrying a laser musket. All right. So that’s how they play things in Sanctuary. The affectation seems so unlike the utilitarian woman standing next to him that it’s almost comical.

“Thank you,” the Boss says gravely. “Preston, this is Robert MacCready. I’ve hired him on, for now—we could use an experienced gun in the ranks.”

Christ, but that sentence is truer than she knows. While they’re talking he’s eyeing up the Sanctuary recruits. A guy who looks like he’s gonna burst into tears at any minute and a pinch-faced woman who’s glaring at him viciously. An old woman with a faraway look in her eye and large, ostentatious gold hoop earrings. A big man a few years older than he is, covered in oil and grease stains and absentmindedly scratching his head. A few other stragglers, a bug-eyed young woman with frizzy red hair, stare back at him. 

It’s a fucking tragedy.

The settlers make awkward hellos, and he mutters something inaudible in response to each one, hoping that the sooner he can get away the sooner they can leave.

“I’ve got to take care of a few things,” the Boss says, “ but make yourself at home. There’re spare beds in the dormitories and there’s hot water, if you’d like to wash. Dinner’s at seven.”

“Right,” he says, dumbly. Because sure, they've got enough water to waste on washing. “A wash. Well, you know where to find me when you need me, yeah?”

She doesn’t say anything, but nods and flashes him a brief look that might be her version of a smile. 

It would be weird as fuck to follow her around, but as he wanders around Sanctuary, accustoming himself to the bizarre energy of it, he keeps half an eye on her anyway. He’s starting to wonder how much she actually  _sleeps_ , because from the minute they arrive she’s a whirlwind. Discussing crop growth with one of the settlers whose names he can’t remember, glaring at a mutfruit tree sagging sadly to the left. Deep in conversation with Preston regarding ammunition stores. Checking with the big man in overalls about some scaffolding he's erected on the side of a building. The only time he loses track of her is when she vanishes into the little shack adjacent to the dormitory, which seems to serve as both an outhouse and bathhouse. While she’s washing herself, he sets himself up at the weapons workbench (is there anything this bizarre commune doesn’t have?) to make some badly needed fixes to his rifle, smoothing out the muzzle crown and tightening up the scope. 

From a mayoral standpoint, she’s done a pretty good job with her resources--he would have killed for half of this shit when he was back in Little Lamplight, the things he could have  _done_  with these resources makes his chest ache with regret—but the openness of it, the ease with which the settlers chat with each other and go about their business, like they’re not wide open to attack, that's fucking unnerving in more ways than one.

When the Boss finally emerges, the sun’s already set, he’s finished with his work, and she’s changed out of her jumpsuit into a white t-shirt and a beat up pair of jeans. She's smaller than he'd assumed from the way she carries herself and the way the jumpsuit fits her, all wiry muscle and scars, like some kind of pre-war featherweight fighter. The freckles run down her arms. Her short hair is still damp (his attention fixes on the way it curls against the back of her neck) and it’s evident for the first time that she’s not much older than he is, despite the tired dark circles lining her eyes. It’s  _also_  the first time he’s seen her out of “uniform,” the first time he’s been able to look at her like a real fucking person. It might just be the weirdness of Sanctuary but it throws him off and when she looks his way, he realizes he’s almost glaring at her. 

Her expression doesn’t change, but when she sees him watching, she abruptly switches paths and walks toward him. Brisk, purposeful. “MacCready,” she says. “I see no one’s scared you off yet.”

“It takes a h—a lot more than a bunch of old women and the Longs to scare me off, Boss.”

“Well, wait until after dinner. Better hope no one’s given Mama Murphy any chems while we’ve been gone.” It could almost have been a joke, on a less impassive person. As it is, she watches him with those solemn eyes, not a flicker or a change there. The effect, without the armor, is even fucking stranger. 

It’s only because he’s been on his own so long and with the Gunners after that that he notices things along those lines—that she says  _we_  even though he’s only been with her a few weeks, even though this is the first fucking time he’s been in Sanctuary. “Right,” he says, and then, because he can’t help himself, he goes on. “You didn’t tell me you’re a f—a general, Boss. Should I have been saluting this whole time?”

“Don’t you start, too.” She breathes a sharp, short breath out of her nostrils. “It’s just a title. It doesn’t  _mean_ anything.”

“It doesn’t?” he says, and gestures around. “Looks like you’re the general of a whole bloody town.”

“It’s the Minutemen… Sanctuary just happened to be the… best place to put them.”

“You just… built all of this for them? Did you even  _know_  these people?” That’s it. She’s crazy, she’s fucking crazy and he knew it from the beginning. He’d gotten the impression on the road that she might’ve been a sensible broad who cared about caps, but this is madness. What the hell was she getting out of it? He had more than the sneaking suspicion that she  _wasn’t getting anything out of it_ , and that was even worse, both for her, and for his own goddamn pockets. It had obviously been too good to be true, and here's the kick in the ass that he needed to realize it. The uneasiness tickling at the back of his skull all fucking night is out in full force.

“No,” she says. If she can tell how fucking furious he is, she doesn’t show it. “I didn’t.”

“So you wanna tell me why, Boss?”

Her eyes narrow. “I don’t. And it’s not any of your goddamn business.”

“If we’re going to be traveling together, and if you’re paying my fee and I'm putting my g—my life on the line for you, then yeah, it is. And if you can’t pay me because you’re haring off to all ends of the Commonwealth  _helping people_  all the g—all the time—”

“MacCready,” the Boss says. In all of this time, her voice hasn't fucking changed, even and throaty as the first day they met. “I’m not  _stupid_.”

“ _So how the h—heck do you explain this place_?”

He can see her tensing, the tendon in her neck standing out in perfect relief, teeth grinding and her strong jaw set. "I can't. You're going to have to trust me on this one."

"In case you didn't notice, Boss, trust ain't exactly in surplus supply out in the Commonwealth."

"I know. But you're going to have to give it to me, or you're going to have to leave. You can keep the caps." 

There's something shading her words, some hint of emotion he's never heard from her before, and when he looks up to meet her eye, there's a look in them, in the goddamn depths of her, that makes it fucking impossible to tell her what he'd like to tell her, which is that Robert Joseph MacCready isn't a moron who doesn't value his life and that he sure as hell's not throwing it away on some broad with a crusade and an indefensible settlement. What he says instead is, "Consider yourself on probation."

She actually  _does_  laugh at that, a gravelly little chuckle that startles him, but he still can't figure out what was so goddamn funny about that. "All right, MacCready. I'm on probation with you, then. Reporting or non-reporting?"

"What?"

"Never mind. It doesn't matter."

She'll do that, sometimes. Say something that's not quite right, but in a way that he can't quite place his finger on. For a guy who grew up in a tunnel, he feels like he's pretty fucking smart and about as well-read as you could expect with an education cobbled together solely from scavved books and holotapes, and he doesn't like it anymore than he likes not knowing  _anything_. But they're not on solid ground enough to say anything about it. He just files them away for the time when he can put the pieces together and solve the puzzle himself.

Any reply is forestalled by one of the settlers ringing a large bell on a pole that's been set up outside the Boss and Sturges' workshop, which apparently indicates dinner. So instead of trying to figure out what the hell her deal is, MacCready follows her into the blocky cube of a building that has beds on the upper levels and a long dining table on the lower. 

Dinner is served communally, and there's a surprising variety of food considering. The main dish is some kind of stew with razorgrain and roasted tatos and carrots and chunks of charred molerat meat thrown in for protein. He's definitely eaten worse even if, like most food in the Commonwealth, it's pretty bland. The settlers don't talk much while they're eating, gulping the stew down like it's a last meal, and he can roll with that, at least. When everyone's finished, he helps Sturges clear the dishes away.

"So you signed on with the General, huh?"

MacCready is struck again by the way no one seems to refer to the Boss as anything but a title. Even the settlers in her own little town don't call her Rosa. Even her own goddamn robot calls her  _mum_. It doesn't seem right, somehow, or fair. But there's something about her that keeps them at a distance. "Guess so," he says, glancing sideways at the mechanic. "How long've you been here?"

"Since the beginning, when it was just ruins and it was only five of us trapped in Lexington," Sturges replies easily, as they carry the plates out to the river. "Half a year back, maybe?"

"And this has been... just working out?"

"Oh, there's been hiccups. Raiders here, super mutants there. We lost Jim a few weeks back to a suicider… but out of all of the places we've been since Quincy, it's the safest. We're finally starting to rebuild."

"Heard about Quincy," MacCready says, the pit of his stomach dropping. He'd heard about Quincy while he was in the Gunners, the glee with which the fall of the city had been recounted. About Colonel Hollis' steadfast belief that Clint actually  _hadn't_  defected, up until the gun was pressed too his temple. He doesn't feel fucking guilty because that would be goddamn  _stupid_. He wasn't with the Gunner contingent in Quincy; he didn't kill those people.  _But you killed other people who didn’t deserve it_ , that treacherous voice in his head whispered.  _You're exactly the same._

Sturges sighs. "It doesn't surprise me. A lot of people died. A lot of good people. And there's not anything any of us could do about it. You can fix a lot with duct tape, but not bullet holes. At least in Sanctuary, we've got a fighting chance."

“Guess so.”

Later on that night, MacCready's still feeling uneasy, though some of his unease isn't necessarily due entirely to Sanctuary. Just his own goddamn moral culpability and Duncan's future. You know, the fucking little things. The little dilemmas that keep you on your toes and keep you human. He can't quite bring himself to sleep, so he sits outside in the crisp night air, listening to the sounds of the Commonwealth. Distant gunfire and explosions. The buzz of a bloatfly somewhere down the river. The hum of generators and the cranking of the water purifier. 

He smokes his way through half a pack of cigarettes before he realizes what he's doing.

"You have a heavy heart," a voice says, and he looks up, startled, to find the old lady staring down at him. Her eyes are clouded over with cataracts and she has that sickly, sweaty smell that people get sometimes when they take too much Med-X. 

"You like going around and stating the obvious, huh, lady?"

The old woman just laughs at him in her rusty, wheezy way. "Mama Murphy's generally known for stating what's  _not_ obvious, kid."

He takes a drag of the cigarette and refuses to humor her, not that that ever stopped anyone before.

"I've seen your future, too," Murphy tells him. She's slowly rubbing her chin and looking very intently at a part of the wall that's not behind his head. "A part of it. A sliver."

MacCready snorts, ignoring the lurch in his stomach. "If you're worth your salt, you'll know the only part of my future  _I_  care about."

"The Sight don't work like that. You're angry and afraid, but it won't be that way forever. The answers you're looking for are out there, and she's going to help you find the way in."

He's  _not_  going to fucking humor her. He's not going to give her the attention she's so obviously looking. He exhales a cloud of smoke into her face, but she doesn't do anything except inhale slowly. What if there was some way she actually did have some kind of power and he didn't ask? "The answers, huh? And what answers are those?"

"I don't know," Murphy shrugs. "The Sight hasn't told me. But they're locked behind a door, and she's the key."

"Thanks," he says sarcastically. "You're real helpful, Mama Murphy." But she doesn't answer him: she's already lost interest, wandering off at a set shambling pace, like a ghoul before it's startled. He watches her small form disappearing into the dark, further down the road, but looks away when the Boss sits down next to him.

She's still wearing the jeans and shirt; she'd washed her jumpsuit and hung it up to dry on the clothes line that runs parallel to their little farm. He can see a multitude of little goosepimples rising on her arms, and quickly looks away. He's not going to fucking look at her tits and see if they're— "MacCready," she says quietly.

"Hey, Boss."

"Getting used to Sanctuary?"

"I'll tell you this much. I'm never gonna like it much. Too open, too exposed. Some of your settlers are g—freaks, you know? But it's all right."

She accepts his offer of the cigarette and takes a deep drag from it herself. "I didn't set out to make any of this happen."

"Could've fooled me."

"Laugh it up, Kid. But it'll happen to you too, one day. You won't be able to turn your back."

He takes the cigarette back from her, a few last deep breaths before he stubs it out on the concrete. Above them, the clouds have rolled in, thick and dark, covering the moon and the stars both. "I can tell you right now that'll never f—never happen. I got too many problems to worry about anyone else's."

Her mouth twitches, but he has the distinct impression she's not saying everything she wants to say. "Fair, MacCready. Fair."

He can’t pinpoint the exact moment that he actually starts to trust her. It sneaks up on him like a mole rat in a dark tunnel, digging its claws into his fucking chest when he’s not paying attention. The first time he actually  _realizes_  that he trusts her, consciously fucking thinks it, is when they're on the road again, heading back to Diamond City, and he spots a deathclaw in the plain below the low, scrubbed rise they're standing on.

"Shit," she says. "Okay, we still have to go that way."

"If we both hit it from a distance, we might be able to cut it down before it gets in range."

"Or risk drawing it out."

"Think you can sneak past it?"

The Boss' mouth twists. "I've seen one up close before. Knee still aches when it rains. Don't want to risk it, especially on open ground."

"On three, then?"

"Yes."

They get into position, both of them crouched down and moving slowly, oh so fucking slowly, far enough apart that if the thing does rush them, they won't both get killed at the same time. He tucks the rifle against his shoulder, rests his cheek on it as he watches the deathclaw through the scope. He can't take the time to look over at her and make sure she's got it herself—he's putting a lot on the line that she can handle her shit. "One... two... three." At this point in his life he barely notices the recoil anymore. He's too focused on seeing whether the shots hit: the deathclaw staggers, once, twice. Both shots hit their mark. And then he's too busy reloading and firing as fast as he can to pay attention.

"Shit!" the Boss cries. "It's still going! I’m going—”

Both of them are on their feet now, and the Boss is calmly standing, firing, and then reloading as quickly as she can as the deathclaw bears down on her. She doesn’t fucking flinch, and if this wasn’t a life or death situation he’d probably be admiring her. His next shot hits the thing in the shoulder as it rears up, its gigantic arm slamming down towards the Boss.  _Shit, shit, shit_. The next few seconds are a blur: he hears her cursing, a yelp of pain, and the deathclaw's growl cut off abruptly as his next shot hits it square in the fucking eye and it slowly topples over with a sound like a he imagines a tree crashing would sound.

The Boss is sprawled on the ground, half-pinned by its corpse, trying to struggle into a sitting position. Her face and neck are a bloody mess.

 _Shit_.

"Boss!”

"I'm okay," she gasps, as he hauls her bodily out from beneath the deathclaw, his hands hooked under her armpits.

"And I'm the Mayor of Diamond City. Christ, let me look at you, yeah?”

It’s pretty bad. She’s being stoic about it like she’s stoic about everything, but the gashes are deep and ragged, and she’s bleeding heavily. Despite her stoicism, she’s got to be in pain. Her pupils are huge and black, and her breath huffs out in a ragged laugh. “Thanks… a lot… Mister Mayor.”

He barks a laugh, but not for the reasons she did. There’s no fucking way she could’ve known, but the timing is ridiculous. “You were never gonna win any beauty contests, Boss, but I think you’re permanently out of the running now,” he attempts to joke, while fumbling for a stimpak and any almost clean cloth he can find.  _Fuck_ , where is it? She tilts her head to the side, letting him inject the stimpack into her neck, nose wrinkling a little as the needle slides in. It’ll help with the worst of the bleeding, but it’s not going to fix everything—not as quickly as they’ll need it. 

“We’re close enough to Diamond City that I can make it,” she says, spitting a wad of blood. “Just sew me up a little.”

“ _Sew you up a little_? Boss, I’m a mercenary, not a doctor!”

“Like hell you never sewed up a rip in your clothes when you had to! It’s no goddamn… different.”

He looks down at his duster, which you could probably find under the dictionary definition of “ragged,” and says, “Boss, are you sure?”

“I can’t see my own goddamn face, MacCready. It’s got to be you. I’m not going to be able to walk it if I keep… bleeding like this.”

“It’s going to get infected,” he says. “This is a terrible idea.”

“ _Do you want me to bleed to death_?”

In a pinch, Wonderglue works just as well for a cut, but the mess that’s the Boss’ face is sure as hell not going to be able to manage that, even as a temporary fix. As they talk, he’s finally found a cloth, as clean as they’re going to goddamn get, and he gently presses it against the wounds. “All right. Just until we can get to Diamond City and get you to see Dr. Sun. He’s going to  _die_  with glee when he sees you, Boss.”

“Just do it,” she says, hissing again as he touches her.

He crouches down next to her, trying not to wince when he sees exactly how bad it is. Her cheekbone is exposed to the air and to be quite honest he’s not entirely sure how she hasn’t fucking passed out yet. Sheer fucking stubbornness, probably. But that’s the Boss for you. She hands him the small sewing kit from a pocket in her jumpsuit, her hands shaking, and he groans. Like hell he wants to do this, but if they’re going to make it to Diamond City together, he’ll fucking do it. She keeps very still as he tries to thread the needle. His own fingers are shaking, and he forces himself to think of it like setting up a sniper shot. Deep breaths. Calm.

He may be a mercenary and not a doctor, but he’s certainly seen combat medicine before, both at home in Little Lamplight and in the Gunners. He tries to remember the way Lucy used to do it: the gentle pinch of the skin together, the way the needle needs to be inserted downward first, leveling off the needle as he tugs it through the other side. Again to the skin’s surface on the other side, not  _too_  deep but deep enough not to tear the skin again.

Concentrated as hard as he is on the task at hand, he’s still incredibly aware of everything about her: the way her eyes are still wide open, focused on him like a fucking lifeline, how hot her skin is under his hands, the way she whimpers in pain and chokes it down, stubbornly, the sound of her shallow breath in his ear.

Lucy would be ashamed of his stitching, he’s sorry to say. It’s messy and sloppy and barely enough to hold her face together. Lucy would’ve been  _gasping_  at the idea of stitches without proper antiseptic. But she would have understood, right, that it’s necessary? He works as quickly as he can and even that… 

“Thanks,” she says, quietly, when he’s done.

“Don’t mention it, Boss.” His hands are stained brownish red with her blood. But she’s in one piece, for now. They’ll make it together, right? “That’s what partners are for, right?”

“Right. Shit. Diamond City it is…”

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> truths are told; surgeries are had.

She’s swaying a little on her feet by the time they get to the gates, but still determined to walk in under her own power, without leaning on him. He rolls his eyes a little and says, again, “You sure you don’t want to sit down a minute, Boss? Security ain’t going anywhere.”

“I’m fine,” she says, with a little grunt that he’s learning is her only concession to pain. “Almost there. Just got… to keep one foot in front of the other.” She walks slowly, but with her head held high, meeting any curious stares sent her way with the murderous glare so uniquely  _the Boss_ that he’s beginning to find it kind of endearing. There’s something about being glared at by a small, angry woman who looks like Frankenstein’s monster in miniature scale that somehow makes residents very, very uninterested in asking questions. 

How they actually  _made_  it the rest of the way to Diamond City, he’s never entirely sure. The approach ain’t exactly easy at the best of times, what with an alternating horde of greenskins, ghouls, and raiders setting up shop in the ruins around the walls. It’s a measure of her own trust in him that she mostly sat back and let him do the shooting. First time since she hired him on that he’s felt like an actual bodyguard, rather than an unwitting recruit into whatever scam she’s running (and the more he gets to know her, the less he suspects it’s a scam). If she’s uncomfortable with the idea of letting him protect her, she doesn’t say anything, but before he gives himself the chance to get the warm fucking fuzzies in his stomach, he’s chalking that up to blood loss.

She makes it the whole way down to the market and into Doc Sun’s surgery before collapsing in the chair with a small squeak of gratitude. Sweat trickles down her face, pooling around the gashes, and the skin around her lips is pale.

The good doctor takes one look at the crude stitches holding her face together and then glares at MacCready with an intensity to rival the Boss. “Don’t tell me  _you_  did this.”

“Didn’t have much choice, Doc.”

“There’s always a  _choice_ ,” Doc Sun mutters, hovering around the Boss, examining the wounds and MacCready’s amateur attempts to close them up. 

“In this case, I wasn’t going to make it back here,” the Boss says. Her voice sounds unlike her, high and tight. “So don’t hold it against him too much, huh?”

“I can sew this up easily, of course, but the danger will be infection. I  _assume_  you did not properly  _sterilize_ your equipment. Never mind. You— _mercenary_. Get out of here while I work.”

The Boss meets his eye, an answer to the unspoken question between them. “I’m fine, MacCready. Go get something to eat. Rest. I’ll be here. I’ve got the caps for it.”

He hesitates at the door. This isn’t like leaving one of his kids with Lucy after an injury. Sun’s a fine doctor, probably. Most likely. But he doesn’t  _know_  him. Doesn’t trust him. And with a sudden brief flash of surprise, he realizes that the Boss isn’t just the Boss, she’s someone he really, really doesn’t want to die. 

“I’m not going to die,” she says, even though he didn’t say anything out loud, and that’s a little too fucking on the nose for him, so he gets the hell out of there without another word.

Diamond City might be the shining jewel of the Commonwealth, but when you’re a semi-down-on-your luck merc who can’t afford to waste his caps, some of the shine comes off. He doesn’t want to get drunk, not while he’s waiting for the Boss, and he’s not particularly hungry. He washes the blood off his hands in a public water fountain until a security officer orders him to stop and tries to chase him off with a baseball bat, then decides that if he doesn’t rent her a room at the Dugout, she’s going to insist on setting off again as soon as she gets out of the surgery because that’s the kind of shit the Boss would pull. Get her face clawed off by a deathclaw and insist on marching out the next day. One of these days she’s just going to drop dead and  _then_  how the hell is he going to afford to pay off Winlock and Barnes? She’s the best thing going he’s had since he trekked up to the Commonwealth, and he doesn’t want to lose her. Lose  _that_.

When he pushes the door open, Vadim looks up and exclaims, “MacCready!” 

“In the flesh.”

“It’s been a long time, my friend. What can I do for you?”

“Yeah, well, I been busy. I need to rent a room for two.” He really should’ve just rented two rooms, but he doesn’t want to waste the caps. He’ll just sleep in the chair if he needs to, it’s not like he hasn’t slept in worse for a good portion of his life.

“Two, eh?” Vadim raises and then waggles his eyebrows suggestively. “Who’s the lucky lady?”

“It ain’t like that, man,” MacCready protests. 

“No?” 

“She’s my  _boss_.”

Although Vadim still seems skeptical, he allows MacCready to rent a room for the two of them. Out of habit, he checks it out to make sure there aren’t any traps set up, or anywhere someone could get the drop on them. Not that he really needs to do that in a Bobrov-owned joint, but the minute you start getting sloppy’s the minute you wake up with a muzzle to your temple and in short order a bullet in your goddamn brain. By the time he’s done and grabbed a quick bowl of noodles from the crazy Protectron in the center of town, he figures it’s been at least an hour and it’s time to go check on the Boss.

Doc Sun is finishing up when he gets there, tying off the sutures. MacCready’s got to admit, they look a lot better and a hell of a lot neater than his sad attempts. The Boss herself is awake, but judging from the tiny pinpoint pupils and the calm way she’s letting Sun tug at the strings holding her face and neck together, she’s pretty fucking doped up. Her hands are still moving, the fingers of her right hand twisting at the simple gold ring she always wears on her left.

(Had she ever mentioned a Mr. Boss?)

“There,” Doc Sun says, with a flourish of the needle. “Good as—well, good as you’ll ever be, I suppose.”

“Thank you,” the Boss replies.

“Make sure you  _keep up_ with the pills I’m prescribing you. They’re my own special invention.”

“Do I wanna ask what’s in ‘em?” MacCready pipes up.

“Mold, mostly,” Doc Sun says happily, or about as happy as he ever sounds, while he’s carefully sticking a bandage to her face with the lighter surgical tape you can find sometimes in old hospitals. “It’s my own recipe, formulated and perfected over the years. Make  _sure_  you take them for the entire course, and don’t drink any alcohol while you’re on them, unless you like projectile vomit. Keep the wounds clean and dry, keep the bandage on  _at least_  two days before you wash the crust off, and the stitches can come out in four or five days if you use a stimpak as well. I do  _not_  recommend attempting to take them out yourself. If you  _must_  see another doctor, do that.”

“Mold and projectile vomit and crust,” the Boss mumbles, “what could be better?”

“Come on, Boss, let’s get you out of here.”

“Right. I’m ready to go. We have to meet up with my contact, and—”

MacCready snorts, because did he call it or did he fucking  _call_ it. “You’re not going anywhere, Boss. I rented a room and you’re gonna take some time off your feet for at least a couple of hours. Whether you want to or not, you’re not wasting my caps. Already paid up front.”

She’s about to open her mouth to protest when Doc Sun chimes in, “You are  _not_  going anywhere and undoing all of my hard work, young lady.”

The Boss makes a rattling noise, a deep inhale of breath that might be a laugh, or it might be some bloody phlegm coming back up. He’s not really sure. It’s gross, either way. “Young lady,” she repeats, with an equanimity unfuckinglike her. “Well. Who am I to argue with a doctor and the best shot in the Commonwealth?”

“Now I  _know_  you’re stoned,” MacCready drawls as he helps her up. “You’re not usually this easy to convince.”

“He did give me some Med-X before he started,” she admits, and allows MacCready to throw her arm over his shoulder. 

Despite the injuries, her body is warm against his, and she doesn’t weigh as much as he thought she would. He makes a mental note that he’s gonna make her  _eat_  more, when she’s feeling a little better, so she stops looking like a woman whittled out of a block of wood and more like herself again. “Yeah, well, I think it’s warranted in this case. Come on.”

“You rented me a room?” she asks. “I didn’t tell you to do that.”

“Of course you f—didn’t, Boss. You were just going to keep pushing yourself until you collapsed. Sometimes I’m gonna take matters into my own hands if you aren’t smart enough to listen to me.”

She doesn’t say anything to that, but looks away. It’s not like he had any doubts he was right, but that and the conversation with Sun are confirmation.

“My friend!” Vadim exclaims when they limp back into the Dugout, “I didn’t know MacCready was talking about  _you_. This changes  _everything._ ” His smile is widening, though, practically ear to ear with glee. 

At times like this, MacCready wishes that he had the Boss’ power of stopping someone in their tracks with just a look, but his glare will have to do.  _Don’t fucking say it, Bobrov_ …  as it is, he just hustles the Boss into the back of the inn as quickly as he can, because she might be doped up but he doubts she’s going to take kindly to any kind of goddamn innuendo, and even if she already knows Vadim and his singular sense of humor, he doesn’t want her to strain herself any further. It’s already going to be a struggle to get her to stay the night.

She’s got to be more wiped out than he thought, though, because she lets him help her out of her combat armor and into the bed. As for MacCready, he flops down into the armchair next to the bed, glad to get off of his own feet, more fucking tired than he’d thought at first. He watches her laying there on her back, breathing evenly, her eyes still open. “Shit,” she says, after a long moment. “That’s the second time a deathclaw almost killed me.”

“What, you have a death wish or something?”

“Just… the worst luck in the Commonwealth,” the Boss replies, shaking her head and inhaling sharply as the movement pulls the stitches. The claw marks begin at the hairline, narrowly bracket her eye, and continue down onto her neck. She’s lucky she’s not blind, so he’s going to go with the best luck, or at least, the kind of luck that evens itself out enough to lean towards  _good_.

They sit in a companionable silence, long enough that he’s starting to think she might have fallen asleep. It’s almost cozy, in a weird way, listening to the rain drumming on the metal roof and nursing a glass of whiskey. Her breathing is deep and even, and there’s a calm looseness to her body that’s so fucking uncharacteristic of her that despite everything, he’s kind of worried. He’s never seen her like this, not even when she’s sleeping. Chems’ll do a number on you, and he wonders briefly how much Sun dosed her with. 

“MacCready,” she says, after a long moment.

“Yeah, Boss.”

“I didn’t tell you everything.”

“You didn’t, but are you sure you want to tell me  _now_?”

“When I’m fucked up, you mean?” the Boss asks wryly.

“That’s exactly what I mean.”

“I need to tell you eventually. I’ve been meaning to, just… And… well. I trust you.” 

She’s watching him from the bed, still with that unnatural calm on her face, at least what he can see from beneath the bandage, gravely examining him for some kind of a reaction. The warm feeling in his stomach is definitely not from the whiskey, but he doesn’t want her to get the wrong idea. It’s not like he’s suddenly gone fucking  _soft_  or anything. “Thanks, Boss.”

“It’s hard to explain…” she mumbles. “But it starts with Sanctuary. It’s not just a  _place_. I didn’t just happen on it. The Minutemen were… not expected, but Sanctuary was my home.”

“Your home?” he says, surprised. “It looks like it’s been abandoned for centuries.” 

“About that,” the Boss replies. The little bitter, hacking laugh again. “No easy way to say it, Kid. How old do I look, to you?”

He looks her over carefully, what he can see, anyway. The tired eyes, the cheeks a little hollower than they should be, but unwrinkled. The little lines in her forehead that are a result of continuously frowning rather than age. Not a gray hair on her. Her face is hard to place. There’s something a bit off about it, the sharp lines and bold nose and thin, sarcastic lips. The Commonwealth ages people funny; he knows he probably looks a few years older than he really is, thanks to his teeth and graying hair. Radiation, the weather, and malnutrition’ll fuck you up. But with her? It’s anyone’s best guess. “Twenty five? Twenty six?” 

“You’re almost right,” she says. “I’m twenty six, but I’ve been twenty sixfor two hundred and ten years.”

“You’re  _shit_ —” he starts, then catches himself. “You’re crazy.”

She snorts, and painstakingly rolls over on her good side, propping herself up on her elbow and wincing as she leans on a bruise. Her eyes are fixed on him like some goddamn… he’s reminded, weirdly, of a picture of an eagle he saw once as a kid. “Maybe, but I’m not wrong.”

“How the…?”

“My husband and I lived… with our son in Sanctuary, before the Great War. Our neighborhood had been selected to take part in a Vault program…” She trails off, and he’s not sure whether it’s with pain or emotion. Probably both. “The day the bombs fell, I had just signed the paperwork to participate in what we thought was a bomb shelter.”

“Knowing Vault-Tec, I’m gonna guess you got a h—a nasty surprise instead.”

Her mouth twists, and for a second, he has a flash of the person she is beneath the mask: rage and fury and sadness flicker across her face in quick succession before it smooths out again. “Understatement of the last two centuries and change. Yes. Our  _experiment_  was that the entire Vault was cryogenically frozen. When I finally woke up, my family and everyone I’d ever known were gone. Dead. I was the only one left in the entire goddamn vault. Me and the radroaches. I learned from terminal entries that they were supposed to monitor us, but there was a mutiny when the supplies ran out. And… there I was. A perfectly preserved  _relic_  from a world that didn’t exist anymore.”

“ _Shit_.” It’s not right but it’s the only thing he can say.

“It was… I walked out of that coffin and the only thing I could think of was that I needed to go  _home_. Only home wasn’t home anymore. And I was alone.” 

She lays her head back down against the pillow again, and just looks so fucking—not defeated, not  _sad_ , but there’s some strange faraway look on her face that makes him want to go over to her and take her in his goddamn arms, bandages and all, even if she’d probably punch him in the face if he tried. He knows that feeling, that sense of loss and helplessness and fury, more than she could possibly guess. But he’s not ready to tell her that. It’s just too fucking funny, ain’t it, the two of them dancing around their carefully hidden truths when the more he learns of her, the more it seems like they’re alike in more ways than he would ever have guessed the day she walked into the Third Rail and talked him down from 250 caps.

“So with Sanctuary… I can’t bring my family back. I’m still learning this world. But Sanctuary is my… I don’t know. I couldn’t abandon the Minutemen to die. I couldn’t just leave it empty. I’d be. I don’t know. Letting them  _win_.” Despite the Med-X’d flatness of her voice, her breathing’s starting to speed up, ragged and furious. “And now I’m their general and I don’t know how to  _stop_.”

“I get it, Boss,” MacCready cuts in, a  _little_  alarmed. “I get it. You don’t have to explain anything more.”

She says nothing.

“You should sleep,” he pushes on, “I mean, as an elderly woman, you gotta take it easy. Don’t want you to break a hip or anything. In these trying times we need to take care of our senior citizenry—”

“MacCready…” she says warningly, but the corner of her mouth tips up and he knows she recognized it for what it was. A terrible, terrible joke.

“Yeah, yeah. I’m gonna pay when you’re up on your feet. But right now, we could both use some sleep, yeah?”

The quiet way she says “yes” breaks his goddamn heart, just for a second, and he waits until her eyes are closed and her breathing’s smoothed out before he pours himself another glass of whiskey and sits back in the chair to try and process all of it. It’s a fucking wild story, but it certainly explains a hell of a lot. The way she had never heard of the Gunners when they first met. The weird jokes she makes that no one else understands. The way no one he knows has ever heard of her before, and given her personality and the way she’s a goddamn force of nature sometimes, how unlikely that is if she  _hadn’t_  been frozen for two centuries. She’s never struck him as a liar before, and he knows enough about the Vaults and related experiments that he realizes, with a sick feeling in his stomach, it’s probably all true. 

If she really is from before the war, it makes the way she fits into the Commonwealth, totally ready to shoot anything that gets in her way and with a set of brass balls to match her smart mouth, even wilder. His fucking  _Boss_.

Who is currently completely knocked out on the bed, her life and safety in his hands. His stomach has that weird goddamn twisting feeling again, watching her and thinking about how she let him take her back here, let him make her rest. He falls asleep thinking about that.

In the morning, she’s still pretty tired and after some back and forth, he convinces her to stay in bed, and the fact that she agrees is a decent measure of how shitty she must be actually feeling. She refuses to go to Doc Sun for more Med-X, though, despite the fact that he can tell she’s in pain. Instead, the two of them sit in the cramped rented room, listening to the radio and reading the latest issue of Public Occurrences while she sleeps in fitful bursts and occasionally wakes with a startled gasp. Later on in the day, he goes to the bar and buys them some food, though every ounce of him protests at the caps he’s wasting. But she needs to eat, and she’s good enough at paying him on the regular that it’s not  _that_  big a deal.

She picks at her food again, wincing every time she chews. “And what about you, MacCready? What’s your story?”

He freezes for a moment. She’d never asked him before and he’d been perfectly content with that state of affairs. He never liked to get to know his marks too well, because they either died, were unreliable backstabbers who tried to kill him and then  _he_  had to kill, or were so goddamn obnoxious he went out of his way not to talk to them. The Boss, though, is starting to get under his skin in a way no one has since Little Lamplight.  _Since Lucy._ “We-ell… I guess to start, it’s nice to be on the road. Goodneighbor was starting to wear out its welcome.”

“I never lived there, so I wouldn’t know.”  

“And you’re better off for it. Trust me. Let’s put it this way. Can’t get much rest when you’re sleeping with one eye open. Still… it was the best place for me to set up shop,” he shakes his head. “For all we’re here  _now_ , Diamond City’s goons would have run me out of town, and wandering the Commonwealth alone isn’t the brightest plan when you’re hard up for caps.”

She stops poking at the warmed-up Salisbury steak and looks up at him. “Setting up shop? What d’ you mean?”

“Exactly what I was doing when you came in. Somewhere to hang out so that people could find me when they required my services. The folks in Goodneighbor tended not to ask too many questions, which suited my needs just fine. So, I made a deal with Hancock and started waiting for the caps to roll in.”

“Caps are  _very_  important,” she says gravely.

He eyes her suspiciously to make sure she’s not teasing him. As far as he can tell, though, she’s serious. And he’s seen her bargaining, cutting people down to the absolute bone. “Yeah, well. You know it. And right now I need every cap I can get.”

“Sounds pretty bad, Kid. You… never told me.”

“Well, I don’t usually go around sharing stuff like this.”

“You don’t have to tell me if you—”

MacCready waves her protests away with an impatient gesture. “You’ve been pretty straight with me, so I’m gonna be straight with you. It’s those two assh…those two idiots you saw me talking to at the Third Rail, Winlock and Barnes. They’ve been hounding me for months and it’d been driving off clients. No one wants to touch me once they learn I used to run with the Gunners. And I figured if I could get enough caps together, maybe I could buy them out.”

“That would make sense, but somehow I get the impression that that’s not the entire solution.” She’s got her hand pressed up against her bandage, a light pressure against it, wincing.

“Well… even if I round up enough caps, I’m not sure how I’m going to pull it off. Winlock and Barnes have a small army of Gunners with them at all times. They might decide to just keep the caps and put a bullet in my head for good measure. If I set up a place to meet them, I’m sure they’d roll in with everyone they’ve got.”

“They really have it in for you that bad?” she asks, with that serious, set look to her, with her chin jutting out. It warms the pit of his stomach, because he already knows how the rest of this conversation is gonna go, and once again, he’s not really sure what the hell he did to deserve landing on his feet like that. Maybe all it took was two people with the worst fucking luck in the Commonwealth to turn shit around on karma itself?

“No one leaves the Gunners,” he says simply. “Not alive. I got a price on my head, unless… Maybe you and I could pay them a little visit and put an end to them before they realize what’s going on. And before you get that look on your face, let me just say that I wouldn’t even be asking if I didn’t trust you.”

She doesn’t even hesitate; she doesn’t even know how she’s turning his goddamn world upside down just with a sentence. “If you need my help, I’m there.”

He swallows hard. “I… don’t know what to say. Truth is, I haven’t been able to rely on anyone since I was a kid. Everyone I’ve met has either tried to rip me off or plant a knife in my back. But you…” The words are fucking pouring out of his mouth and he can’t goddamn stop himself, and he’s not even drunk. The Boss has that effect on him, it seems; he thought he’d mostly reined in his babbling during his time in the Gunners, but the minute she turns those brown eyes of hers on him, fixes him with that grave, focused attention, he's singing like a goddamn canary. “You’re different. We see eye-to-eye on almost everything. And I have a funny feeling you actually care about what happens to me. That’s why I asked for your help. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to make this easy on you. If you feel like helping me with this, head over to the Mass Pike Interchange and we’ll take them down. If you don’t, I’m not going to hold it against you. Either way, thanks for hearing me out. It’s nice to know that you care.

“Of course I fucking care, Kid,” she says, sounding offended. “We’re going to take out those bastards as soon as I get on my feet.”

“But not before,” he adds hastily.

“ _I_ will be the judge of that.”

“At least wait until you get your f—your stitches out.”

Even though she bickers with him about it for the rest of the night, it’s a fight he doesn’t mind having. He can feel the weight lifting from his chest already. Take care of Winlock and Barnes, get those assholes off his back, and then he can focus all of his energy on finding a cure for Duncan. For once, his terrible luck might be starting to turn around. And it’s all thanks to the Boss, totally oblivious of everything except her own goddamn determination to barrel through the Commonwealth, leaving stunned raiders in her wake.

_Watch yourself, MacCready_ , whispers the treacherous voice in his head. Oh, he’s going to watch himself, all right. He’s sure as hell not going to fuck up the best thing he’s had going since as long as he can remember.

Right?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> small note on distances & places: at times, for the sake of pacing and not having everyone turn up in the place they're journeying to immediately, i based them a little more on real-world boston than on the fallout map. medford and malden seem conflated on the map, and although they're adjacent irl, they're definitely not THAT close. likewise, i used medford memorial hospital as a stand-in for lawrence memorial hospital (i'm assuming that's what it was based on, anyway), and then used lawrence as a reference point for temple shalom, which actually does exist (and is about a half hour walk if you aren't walking fast). the mass pike interchange is about a four hour walk from medford.

He helps her take the bandages off the next day and wash the crusted blood and pus from the wound. He imagines that at this rate, he’s probably the goddamn poster boy for _not_ being a mercenary. Become a gun for hire, kids! Roam the Commonwealth desperate for caps and eventually, if you’re lucky, you might get the chance to clean some blood off of your Boss’ face while also awaiting imminent death by Gunner. Only the best career opportunities available, with room for advancement. Sign up before the position fills, fuck knows there are enough other desperate chumps waiting in line.

Exposed to the air again, the wound’s still red and angry looking, but it doesn’t _seem_ infected. Maybe both of their luck’s starting to turn around. He watches her examining herself in the mirror, the three ragged lines marking her face, the bruising around her eye. She raises her hand as if to touch them, catching herself just in time. “Well, I’m sure as hell not going to be able to travel in disguise anymore.”

From behind her, looking over her shoulder to meet her eye in the mirror, he laughs. “Not sure if you could’ve done that anyway, Boss.”

The scowl she directs at his reflection in the glass lacks heat, and smooths itself into nonexistence when she sees him grinning at her. 

The walk out of Diamond City is in a silence that could possibly be called companionable. It’s another funny thing about the Boss—put her out of commission for for a couple of days and once she’s back on her feet she’s practically vibrating with repressed energy. Despite the fact that she still kind of looks like death warmed over, she sets a hard pace. They never talk much in city ruins. Too many places a voice at the wrong time could echo, give away your position to hidden enemies. He’s always liked that she _gets_ it and doesn’t try to fill silences that don’t need to be filled.

It’s not until they’re back in the relative emptiness of the wasteland that she relaxes, just a little, and slings the rifle back over her shoulder. MacCready doesn’t, of course; whatever she has to say about it, he’s going to watch her goddamn back, especially when she’s still recovering. And he sure as hell doesn’t mention the fact that the Mass Pike interchange is to the south east and they’re heading north; to be honest, he doesn’t want her storming a Gunner entrenchment in her current state, anyway. “So where’re we headed, Boss?”

“Some business in Medford to take care of,” the Boss says. “A few of the turrets need repairing, and I’ve got a deal for a box of circuitry in exchange for three packs of military-grade duct tape. And something personal, as well.”

His ears prick up, just a little, at the mention of something personal. He hates to admit it but he’s so fucking curious to know what the _hell_ it could be, especially after hearing her history the day before. What could possibly be personal for a woman thrown two hundred years in the future? She’d said her family was gone, and he can’t imagine that there’s much left of her descendants, given the circumstances. If he was in her place, how would he feel, walking around the shell of a life that had long ago passed? Probably pretty fucking similar to his first few weeks in Bigtown, if he was being honest with himself. But worse.

After an hour or so of a steady hiking pace, he half-considers asking her to sit the hell down and take a break, but somehow, he doesn’t quite think she’d be amenable to that. From what he can tell, the only time she actually rests is if something forces her to take one, and he doesn’t have the same power as a deathclaw’s hands, that’s for goddamn sure.

Medford is one of those old style suburbs where the long grass lawns have been blasted brown with radiation and the neat rows of houses turned to rows of crumbling wrecks. It’s almost impossible to imagine what it must have looked like back when she was living her first life. He can see the high rise of the Medford Memorial Hospital and murmurs, “Hey, Boss. Greenskins like that place, so let’s take it easy on the approach…”

“Roger that,” she says, and he almost laughs at how fucking quaint and anachronistic it is, like she fell right out of an old military holotape drama. 

In the end it’s an anticlimax, if anything. Someone’s already gotten to the mutants first; he sees through the scope of his rifle the huge green corpses bleeding onto the pavement. “Yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna be a problem anymore, Boss,” he says, leaning back so she can take a look.

She squints through the scope, and nods in satisfaction. “I’ll take what we can get.”

Her contact turns out to be a squirrelly little man wearing sunglasses despite the overcast gloom of the day, short and scrawny. He keeps his hands on his rifle the entire time, just in case. Not that the guy’s much of a threat, but he seems exactly like the sort of person who’d snap and need to be taken out. It’s always the quiet ones, in his experience. But the deal goes off with only a small hitch, the Boss examining the box and finding one less circuit board than she’d been promised, and adjusting her own payment accordingly. The contact starts to protest, but finds himself looking down the barrel of MacCready’s rifle and decides it’s better not to argue.

“You didn’t have to do that,” she says after he’s done, after they’ve watched the circuit vendor scurry away into he ruins he’d emerged from.

“I sure as hell did.”

“I know him. He’ll cheat the pants off you if he can, but he’s no danger.”

“Until he decides he doesn’t want to pay and takes it into his own hands.”

Her level brown gaze meets his, and he refuses, stubbornly, to look away. “You’re pretty suspicious for a kid, you know.”

“Live the life I have, Boss, and it’s not without reason.”

“Well. Try not to kill my contacts, if you can.”

“Unless they try to kill you first, they’re perfectly safe.”

The Boss’ mouth twitches, just a little, and for a second he almost thinks she’s going to smile. She says, instead, “Your concern is touching.”

“F—concern ain’t got nothing to do with it, Boss. It’s my _job_.”

“Right,” she says, quietly. “Okay. And now for the personal business…”

It’s times like these that he’s fairly sure there’s a screw loose somewhere in her brain. It’s one thing to trek all the way up to Medford for a guaranteed shipment of parts, he gets that. She’s got a settlement to run ( _several_ settlements to run, apparently, if the map tacked up in the Sanctuary workshop is any indication) and working circuitry’s in short supply. But it’s another thing to trek all the way up to Medford to stroll down the street (Winthrop Street, the sign says) like she belongs there, like she’s going for some kind of afternoon fucking _constitutional_ and MacCready’s her stalwart escort accompanying her. She passes right by any number of ruins that look like they could have parts worth salvaging, so it’s not a supply run. No. Wherever the Boss is going, she’s got a destination in mind.

He sees it before she says anything, a long, low, mostly one story building that takes up several lots along the road. The two-story part of it’s had the roof caved in long ago, and the remnants of some kind of design remain rusted to the front. To his eyes, it looks like a candlestick with seven branches, smaller towards the center and curving outward. She stops on the sidewalk, staring at it, and he glances sideways to try and get a read on her face. As always, it ain’t exactly easy; the Boss pretty much always looks kind of pissed off or incredibly fucking serious, depending on the angle. It’s not a look improved by the fresh wound stapled shut. She stands there, staring at the building, her mouth pressed into a thin line and her hands clutching her rifle. Her knuckles are white.

“All right, Boss?”

She breathes out a long breath through her nostrils. “Yeah. Let’s go in.”

He follows. As they’re cutting across the lawn, overgrown with hubflowers, they hear a snarl from the doorway and he sees the telltale lurch of a ghoul hauling itself to its feet. “We got ferals, Boss!”

“I see ‘em,” she says. “I got your six.” It’s starting to get clockwork, now, how he takes the lead to pick off the ghoul charging them, looking down the sight to catch more of ‘em hidden in the underbrush. One, two, and three to the head before they can even get up. The noise has raised the others, but the Boss has that covered while he reloads: there’s enough space still on the lawn that it’s barely even a question of her making the shot. Of course, that means there’s probably still ghouls holed up in the building. Even now, he can’t entirely suppress a shudder of disgust that runs through him. Not fear just—hatred, hot and ragged, like he hasn’t felt for many things in his life.

The Boss walks quickly across the lawn to one of the fallen ghouls, and looks down at it, examining its ruined face and tattered clothing.

“Someone you know?” MacCready calls.

He wasn’t really expecting her to take him goddamn seriously, but she says, “I don’t think so.”

He jogs over to catch up with her. “Hold up, Boss. What the hell is this place?”

“It is— _was_ —Temple Shalom.”

“A temple? I didn’t figure you for the religious type.”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about me,” she says shortly, and walks towards the door.

That’s kind of unfair, he thinks, but he’s not going to let her know she hurt his feelings because she sure as hell didn’t. “You looking for something?”

She doesn’t answer immediately, so he follows her in. The door is hanging from its hinges and inside, the temple looks pretty much like any other prewar relic. Scavvers have already hit it and taken most of the useful shit; he can see, in places, where someone punched through the walls and stripped out the copper pipes. There’s a pile of human shit lumped next to an empty tin of Salisbury steak, and he sees the Boss’ mouth thin out into that disapproving line again when she notices it.

“It should be through the big double doors.”

It’s with almost dispassionate efficiency that she lifts her rifle to cut down the ghoul that lurches from them.  The inner doors, too, have been chopped down, likely by scavvers trying to get inside. The Boss steps over the wreckage, and he eyes the neat little rows of chairs facing the altar. Definitely ghouls slipped amongst ‘em. Without having to say anything, he and the Boss move down the aisle down the center, back to back, picking them off as they go. It’s the kind of ease he’d appreciate more if the rest of the interaction wasn’t so fraught, like she’s making up for telling him her story in goddamn spades.

The walls of the sanctuary are rotting wood-paneled, and stairs lead up to a small closet of some sort. He can see gaps in the wood where some decoration’s been ripped out. The Boss takes the stairs two at a time, wrenching the doors open, to find… nothing. “Shit,” she says.

“What the _hell_ are you looking for?” MacCready demands.

 Defeated now, the Boss sighs, and slumps down in one of the two blue benches set against the walls. “The torah.”

“The what now?”

“You aren’t doing anything to assuage my fears that I’m the last Jew in the Commonwealth, Kid.”

MacCready shrugs, helplessly. “I’ve never met one. What’s a torah?”

“ _Torah_ ,” she corrects his pronunciation with a little wince. “The holy book… I knew it probably wouldn’t still be here, but I wanted…” 

“If it _was_ , you wanted it.”

“You’re not even supposed to touch the words with your fingers,” the Boss says. The normally expressionless drawl breaks a little. The more time he spends with her, the more he's beginning to realize that the mask has more cracks than she'd like to admit. “It’s kept locked at all times, there’s a whole damned service to even take it out of the _aron kodesh_ … Someone might’ve taken it with them, if there was anyone left after the bombs fell, but who the hell knows. It doesn’t matter now.”

“So this was your temple, huh?”

“I came here after school every Tuesday and every Saturday morning for most of my life.” She looks out over the rows of chairs, spotted with the bodies of ghouls who could very well have been people she knew. “When I was thirteen, I stood on this altar and became an adult.” The laugh is short, gravelly, and bitter. “Or that’s what they told me, anyway. I don’t think anyone at thirteen really has any goddamn idea what the future’s got in store for them.”

When MacCready was thirteen, he was three years into his tenure as mayor, the Wanderer had already been gone for a year, and he was about as adult as he was ever going to get until they kicked him to the surface, but he doesn’t say that to the Boss. Somehow, he has the feeling it’d ruin the moment. And even MacCready, brash and cocky, didn't know what the future had waiting for him. He could never have predicted Lucy and Duncan, or the chain of events that would end up with him sitting in the sanctuary of a temple filled with ghouls. By fucking _choice_.

"Let's go," she says, hauling herself to her feet, all vulnerability gone. "There's nothing left for us here."

He doesn't say anything to her on the walk out of Medford—whatever she's feeling, whatever goddamn long shot of a hope had led her back to the rotting, stripped room, is tamped down again so far that he almost could believe she never showed it, that he could imagine he heard the tense emotion in her voice. The Boss is a puzzle all right. The twitchy little part of him that can't leave shit well enough alone is already gearing up, determined to figure it out.

He's with her in Diamond City when she gets the stitches taken out, leaning against the wall of the surgery with his arms crossed over his chest as she sits stoically in the chair, gritting her teeth as Doc Sun pulls the stitches out and scolds her for not relaxing her face. The doctor's mold pills have done their job, though, because although the wound is still red and raised, it's not infected and her face is still mostly in one goddamn piece, so that's caps about as well spent as you can get, in MacCready's opinion.

Diamond City at night is like nowhere else in the Commonwealth. Knowing you can walk around the streets, reasonably free from harm despite the dark, it fucking strange. He's never liked it much, too stifling. He hates the looks that city security always gives him, like they know he's trouble even when he's minding his own fucking business. Clearly there are some people who are Diamond-City-at-night material, and others who aren't, and he's not the kind of guy who makes the cut. The Boss, neither, for all she's a pretty damned well-behaved. You don't get scars like she does without being trouble, or at least, he figures that's why there's always an officer tailing them, no matter what they're doing.

"Think we wore out our welcome," she murmurs to him, and he nods in agreement.

"Sure you're up for the walk?"

The Boss shrugs. "I told you where we were going when I got the stitches out, Kid."

The warmth in his stomach's got fuck all to do with relief, and it's a warmth he doesn't want to examine too fucking closely, so he just follows her out of the gates and sets off behind her. The interchange is about a three hour walk from Diamond City. There's advantages and disadvantages: nighttime's the best time for an ambush, but fighting Winlock and Barnes and whatever army they've got there coming off of a march like that is suicide. 

"Let's camp for the night out of sight," the Boss says, when they can see the crumpled cloverleaf of the interstate looming in the distance. "Scout around, get a better idea of their numbers in the morning, and hit 'em when it's dark again."

MacCready can't argue with the wisdom of that particular plan, so once they've found a suitable place they set up a minimal camp. No fires. Just dried radstag and roasted tato, the one sleeping roll that they share between them on watch shifts. He takes the first watch, turning his back to her as she crawls into the roll, closes her eyes, and is instantly asleep. She must've been feeling the last few days more than she'd let on, not that that's any fucking surprise.

It's an uneventful watch. They chose a decent spot, because he doesn't even need to lift his rifle. There's something to be said for the gunners destroying everything in a 50 mile radius, in some cases. And when it's his turn to sleep, he tries not to think too much of the things he'd seen them do to get that security. The things he had done. Fuck it. He's making up for it now.

In the morning, though, she's as good as her word. They spend a good few hours circling the interchange, watching the gunners coming up and down the rickety elevators. The bulk of the base is on the interstate itself, but they've got the approach well-guarded. He's lying in the grass on his stomach next to the Boss, watching the privates and conscripts going about their daily guard duties. 

"We can take them out and use the elevators," the Boss says, "but that's risky."

"Whoever's up there would probably hear everything."

"The other way's risky as hell, too. The road's mostly intact, to the north. It _could_  be possible to take it that way and pick off some of 'em from a distance..."

"If you don't mind falling to your death," MacCready says, "I f—I hate heights, Boss. You can't trust 'em like you can trust a good solid roof over your head. But it's your call."

That's how he ends up later that night, crawling along the goddamn interstate ruins. He's not sure about the height, really, but it's got to be at least thirty feet at this point in the road. Although there are large portions of the road that are flat and easy to walk along, there are holes in unexpected places where a misplaced foot could send you dropping to your fucking death. The Boss is scrambling over the ruins ahead, jumping from one angle to the next as she goes. He closes his eyes, counts to fucking ten, and follows. She might be religious but he doesn't have a god to fucking pray to in situations like this.

He jumps.

His feet hit solid concrete, but scrabble, sliding downward and with another burst of desperate energy he pushes himself forward, his hands grasping at anything he can grab, flopping onto the flat road. "Shit, Boss, are you _trying_  to get us killed?"

She looks at him over her shoulder, and for one of the first times since he's known her, smiles: it's a wide grin, brief enough that he almost thinks he imagined it. "The opposite, really."

The rest of the approach is nowhere near as fraught, and by the time they're closing in on the gunner base he's feeling more like himself again. If he doesn't look too far to the fucking left he can _almost_  imagine they're just walking on regular ground. By the time they're a mile away it's a more careful approach: crouching behind outcroppings or sliding forward on their stomachs only. During the final moment of calm, they're sitting next to each other, shoulder to shoulder, with Winlock and Barnes completely unaware behind them. He glances sideways at the Boss' scarred face, the determined set of her jaw and serious mouth. 

"All right. Winlock and Barnes should be here. Let’s take them down. You ready, Boss?" he whispers. "You don't have to do this."

"MacCready, don't be an idiot," she whispers back. "We've come this far and I gave you my word."

"Yessir."

"We'll go for the sentries and the turrets first."

They do.

All hell breaks loose.

As a rule if he can afford a head-on firefight like this one, he usually likes to fucking do it. But there's a certain strategic genius to the way that the gunners take the high ground and choke off the entry points. It certainly forces desperate fucking mercenaries to attack in ways they normally wouldn't. He pops up from behind the wall like a mole in one of those weird mallet-driven prewar games, firing three quick shots: the turret and, as the resulting explosion sends the sentries screaming into action, headshots.

" _Nice_ ," the Boss says appreciatively, but there's no time. 

The downside to this approach is that, even when you've picked off the worst of it, you still eventually have to run forward across an open space, under a hale of fire and stinging lasers, hoping against hope that one of them doesn't have your fucking _name_  written on it. He might not pray, but he certainly has his mantra, and it's a simple one: _don't fucking_ die, _don't fucking_ die. He repeats it over and over in his head as he lunges for cover, hitting the ground on his shoulder and hissing in pain.

That's how he finds himself looking up into the glowing red head of an assaultron right as he's trying to reload. "A LITTLE HELP, BOSS, THAT'D BE FUCKING NICE."

She hears him: the next two shots take out its head and one of its legs, and it lurches towards him anyway, its stabbing arms swinging at him as he scrambles to his feet to try to finish it off. It's still firing; he can feel the heat of the laser searing through his sleeve and cooking a thin line of his arm, but he can't waste time paying attention to that. The rifle, properly reloaded, is an extension of his fucking arm as he lifts and _fires_.

Shit, that was close.

MacCready's on his feet, though, because there's no fucking time to waste. Winlock and Barnes are there somewhere, and of course Winlock's wearing fucking power armor. He can see the fucker turning, and his opportunity narrowing— _shoot the fusion core, shoot the fucking fusion core_. In the chaos around him, he can hear rather than see the Boss' rifle cracking, a sergeant screaming curses, but his attention is focused on the rifle, controlling his breathing, and the tiny, wavering point of the core.

His shot flies true and the tiny container of nuclear material explodes with a _bang_ , knocking Winlock to the ground in a wash of flame, struggling to get out of the frame before he burns to death in his own clothes. It's an ignominious end, that's for fucking sure, but no better than anything Winlock did to dozens of other hapless idiots while MacCready watched because he was too fucking scared to speak up and say anything. _Burn, fucker_ , he thinks, before he's too busy trying not to die to focus on Winlock's fiery death.

"You fucking traitor," Barnes screams, rushing him, laser pistol raised to fire when the Boss comes out of fucking nowhere, barreling into his side and knocking him bodily to the ground. The shot goes awry and it gives MacCready enough time to shoot the fucker right in the torso as he's lunging to his feet to attack again.

Everything's very fucking quiet, all of a sudden, as he realizes that they've fucking _done_  it. He might've bruised the hell out of his shoulder, gotten grazed with lasers and scrapes all over, but he's _alive,_ and so is the Boss. She picks herself off of the ground near Barnes' body, dusting off her armor and jumpsuit, and spits on him.

“This should send a message to the Gunners to stay off my back,” he says, with quiet satisfaction as he looks as the destruction they've wrought. Winlock and Barnes were certainly a pair of goddamn motherfuckers if he ever met them, and he's not at all sorry they're dead. Quite the opposite in fact. For the first time in a long goddamn time he doesn't feel the weight of the knowledge that they're out there somewhere, funding that bounty on his head, just waiting for someone cocky and smart enough to take him out. Waiting for the bullet in the back of his skull when he's least expecting it. 

The Boss also surveys the damage. The smoking machine gun turrets, the blood spatters. She limps toward him, clapping him on the back as she says, “I’m sure Winlock and Barnes heard you loud and clear.”

“Definitely. With the Gunners, it’s always about the bottom line. They just lost this entire way station and that cost them big... Besides, they have no way of knowing I was involved. Anyway. I guess I owe you a favor now. After all, you hired me but I’m the one that dragged you out here.”

“Well, I wasn’t about to let you have all this fun alone,” the Boss says gravely.

He surprises himself by laughing, and then winces as the laugh twinges all kinds of sore muscles in his fucking chest. “Glad you enjoyed it." He hesitates, because the next words are fucking painful for him to say, no matter the context in which they're being said. She's been too fucking good to him, all things considered, and as much as it pains him to part with any money, he hates _owing_  people more. Owing people is how you end up doing things you don't fucking want to do. Owing people is how you end up with the fucking Gunners in the first place. "Tell you what. I’m going to give you back the caps you paid me in Goodneighbor. I’ll stick with you because that was part of the original deal, but now we’re even.”

"Kid, I _can't_ —" 

He forces the money into her hands, though she looks like she's about to drop it like a hot fucking coal. “There you go. I guess we’re done here. Lead on, Boss.”

“MacCready, I'm not taking your goddamn money.”

“Don't argue with me, Boss. I don't like owing people.”

“Don't be stupid, Kid, you don't _owe_  me anything. I _hired_  you.” The Boss can be stubborn but she ain't got nothing on Robert Joseph MacCready when his heels are dug in, so he doesn't say anything. She'll figure it out eventually, and she does. A soft sigh as she pockets the caps, glaring at him. "Fine, have it your way. But I'm keeping these for your next pay.”

“Right,” he says, agreeing with her so she'll stop arguing, and repeats: “So I guess we're done here, then.”

“We're done, then. Let's go back to Sanctuary.” 

Not home. Never home. But as he thinks about how he's going to sleep for a goddamn week and make sure the Boss does the same, he's beginning to see the benefits.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [rosa after some more time in the commonwealth](http://56.media.tumblr.com/41b36bbc036bffc274da4b77994d7f58/tumblr_nznweczdxk1qzxr5oo2_1280.png).


End file.
